When he first began his flight training, Zach Elliott, EAA 1237827, did not intend to open a flight school. Zach soloed at 14 and got his private pilot license at 17, all with the goal of becoming an airline pilot.
He had to change his plans when he was 18 and training toward his commercial license, after a car accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. Not wanting to give up on his dreams of an aviation career, Zach switched his focus to teaching others to fly. He found a flight school that taught students with disabilities and became an instructor there, before leaving and founding Ontario Advanced Ultralights at Kingston Airport (CYGK), in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in September 2015.
“It’s been really rewarding,” Zach said. “I’ve definitely had some challenges. Coming straight out of high school I didn’t have any business background or anything like that. I just kind of figure it out as I go. It’s definitely been a lot of fun. It’s kept me busy and gives me something to look forward to every morning.”
Initially, Zach said he focused on training able-bodied students mostly due to a hangar that wasn’t the most accessible, but after some time he was able to move his business to a better spot and open it up to more students.
“We have a couple of paraplegic people now who are working on their permit,” Zach said. “It is kind of awesome to leave the wheelchairs on the ground. When you’re up there, nobody knows that you’re disabled at all. People find freedom in flying, but especially paraplegic people, because you get to leave the chair behind.”
Zach uses the same airplane he learned to instruct in, an Ikarus C42, to train students who cannot use their legs. He said the adaptation is fairly simple, and training is not that much different than it is for any other flight student.
“There’s a lot of people that get hurt and are kind of just sitting around the house, and don’t think they can do stuff like this,” he said. “But it’s quite easy. It’s just adapted with simple hand controls on the rudders, everything else is the same.”
As his business grows, Zach hopes to work with outside organizations to create a scholarship for students with disabilities to get into the cockpit and experience the same freedom he has enjoyed since he first was introduced to aviation as a child.
“My grandfather used to own a glider, and he was an aviation engineer,” Zach said. “Before I was born the airplane got destroyed in a windstorm, but he ended up taking me out to where he used to glide, and he bought me a discovery flight. So we went up in a glider, and the pilot there let me take the controls for a little bit. Ever since then I’ve pretty much been hooked.”